Discussing Ep. 2.11 & 2.12
Since I missed the review of last week's episode, I decided to combine the two, which makes for an interesting comparison and a rather disappointing revelation.
I was excited. I was totally excited at the idea that these three shadows were somehow supernatural.
Only to find out that they belong to these three mere criminals.
What doesn't make a whole lot of sense was that the shadows appeared to Adrian, in the alley, after he came to the idea that perhaps they weren't doing good by following the Callings, but perhaps were bringing about the Apocalypse. That's why they gave off that element of the supernatural, that these shadows were somehow messengers of whoever was giving the callings.
So either Adrian has a part to play in taking these three criminals down and/or saving Cal, or that was all done to throw us off. Either way, it's massively disappointing that it's just three meth dealers, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, at least at this point. Why show up to Adrian, months back, if he has nothing to with them? From the get go of Ep. 11, it was revealed that months had passed by and in those months, Cal had been haunted by those shadows practically every night. They mentioned nothing about Adrian. So months of practically nightly visions of these shadows are appearing to Cal...for what?
Those shadows were simply prophesying Cal's abduction? What I also have a problem with in regards to this particular revelation is that this development could not and most likely would not have happened if Mick had done what she was supposed to do and followed the calling regarding the lead meth dealer, Jace.
Mick was emphatically told by the Callings to let Jace go and to not arrest him. She arrested him anyway....because that's her job and he was a guilty meth dealer. How in the world did the Callings expect her to not arrest him? But apparently, the Callings did, in fact, fully expect her to arrest him and defy a calling because the shadows were revealed to Cal and Adrian BEFORE Mick had ever even run across Jace. Like, MONTHS before! Hell, that first drawing that Cal made was from the year before. So he was essentially destined to run into these guys long before any of the callings started! Mick arresting Jace led to him wanting revenge and hatching a plan to overtake that prison transfer bus, a la Fugitive style!
So the Callings knew that these three would be guarded by a couple of incompetent security guards and would eventually commandeer the bus and head back into town to get revenge on Mick. If that's the case, then why give Mick a calling to let Jace go? Why give her a calling they knew she could not, or would not, fulfil? The whole premise of the past couple of episodes was that following the Callings was what was going to save all of them from the Death Date. At least, that's what they all believe. To fail to follow the Callings was believed to have tragic consequences. Hell, even trying to get rid of the Callings, like Saanvi had apparently done, would bring them all to a state of madness like what apparently occurred to Al Zuras and his crew and to Saanvi (more on that later). So they're sort of playing it up like Mick blatantly defying a calling is going to have a bad consequence for her. My question is: why?
I very much appreciated Mick's talk with the Callings (and I'm addressing them now as an entity because I basically have no choice at this point) because she couldn't figure out how or why she and Ben and all of them consistently obeyed the callings, now matter how vague or bizarre or counter-intuitive those callings were, and yet Zeke was still suffering frost bite and would succumb to his own Death Date in a few weeks time. It was a very poignant moment because it sort of mirrored what a lot of devotees to a particular faith often feels. When you do good works and you do all that you believe a God or Higher Power wants you to do, and yet tragedy seems to strike you and all the good you do doesn't seem to come back on you, you often feel like giving up. Job anyone? Certainly, many people have turned away from their faith for that exact reason, while some have stayed the course, even unto their death. So I understood why Mick was feeling what she was feeling. Given how TJ was miraculously saved, why wasn't the same thing happening for Zeke?
And yet, even after this crisis of faith, she still obeyed the Callings. The Callings told her to let this kid, Oscar, go....which started a chain reaction (as it often does) to them finding the bus driver, then finding the meth lab, then finding Jace. When Mick goes to arrest Jace, the Callings STRONGLY tells her to let him go. She couldn't because 1) there was no way she could explain letting a meth dealer caught making meth go to any of her superiors, and 2) he's a meth dealer that was getting kids and people on the streets strung out on meth. The quirk in all of it was that the meth lab mysteriously blew up and had she let Jace go, he might have been in there and died and everything would be fine. But playing that scenario out, then the three of them would not have abducted Cal because they wouldn't be alive (presumably). So why would Adrian and Cal be getting the visions of the three shadows BEFORE Mick ever even met Jace? Did the Callings count on Mick NOT obeying a calling? If so, why give her a calling to let Jace go at all? Why give her a calling they knew she would not fulfil? Was it so that there's going to be a consequence for Mick for disobeying a calling? If so, that makes no sense either.
Remember Grace and her calling? She was supposed to "open her eyes" to the truth. Open whose eyes? Erica's. The same Erica that was married and in cahoots with Simon and was arrested MONTHS AGO (according to the timeline now) along with Simon and we never heard or saw anything mentioned about either of them again. When Grace got the calling, she went to Erica and tried to talk to her, only to have Erica basically curse Grace and her unborn baby to Hell because she thinks anyone associated with Flight 828 is a freak. So Grace, being new to the whole Callings relationship, basically gives Erica a giant middle finger for being such a hateful bitch.
So she defied a calling. Where is her consequence? There wasn't any. So why would there be a consequence for Mick? There shouldn't be any. If Grace gets another chance to fulfil that calling, why wouldn't Mick get the same opportunity? I'm hoping she will, otherwise it's all horribly inconsistent. And I get the sense that even the writers perhaps don't know what the nature of the Callings are and what they all mean and how they all work. I give them credit for linking the things as they have done so far, but they're kind of writing themselves into a corner now. Especially when it comes to Zeke.
I will say that they've done a good job of making me feel sympathetic towards Zeke. I wasn't really high on the guy before because he seemed to be doing a lot more harm than good, but now that he keeps suffering the effects of frost bite and he inches closer to his Death Date, I've found myself feeling bad for the guy and even cheering on his relationship with Mick. The problem is, they sort of have to kill him at this point! Everything he's been doing up to this point has been because he believes he will die in a matter of weeks or days. Him reconciling with his mom, him proposing to Mick, him reconciling with his dad.....all of that occurred because he thinks he's going to die. And while it would be miraculous, if not very generous, to have the Callings save Zeke, they've already done that with TJ and so it would really make death on the show feel like nothing.
When TJ was thought to have died, that was pretty heavy. It affected Ben and Olive pretty badly and they essentially went through the motions of grieving, only for all of that to be for nothing. At this point, all of them are essentially prepared for Zeke to die. While none of them are necessarily at peace with it, they all seemingly have come to accept it. And I get the sense that God or the Callings are going to take Zeke because Mick's mom seemed to be at peace with this decision too.
I have to admit, this choked me up. I think anybody who has lost a loved one before experiencing a moment like this (like a wedding or a graduation or some other public milestone) would have wanted to see something like this....to see their loved one there, at peace and participating in that moment even though they had passed on. But what I also got from this, from the whole chain reaction of Ben getting the calling about the plane and meeting that airline technician to finding the vale that belonged to their mom to their mom showing up at the wedding.....that Zeke is going to die. Why else would the events and callings lead to these kind of rushed moments for Zeke if he wasn't going to die? Why arrange it that, even when Mick wanted to call the wedding off because she didn't want to believe that Zeke was going to die, Ben gave her their mom's vale which signified that Mick HAD TO go on with this wedding. It signifies that Zeke doesn't have that much time. If he doesn't die, then all of this was for nothing. My thinking is that he will die, but that they're going to discover something in his death that will help them all to understand the Callings and how to avoid the Death Date.
Plus, I think it's only fair that Jared isn't the only one who has to suffer. I've said this before and I'll say it again: Jared is a good guy. Yes, there was that slip up with him threatening Zeke but given everything he gave up and everything he lost because of Mick and Zeke, can you blame the guy for flipping out a little bit? In the end, he infiltrated the Xers and brought them down. He made peace with Mick and even showed up at Zeke and Mick's wedding and shook Zeke's hand. He's always had Mick's back and looks like he always will. And though I believe that if Mick wanted to get back together with Jared that he would take her back in a heartbeat, I truly believe that he's moved on. And if so, I think I know who he should pair up with.
One pairing that seemingly will not continue is TJ and Olive. I thought this was a bold move, albeit somewhat redundant. So TJ got a scholarship to do some studying in Egypt, where he hopes to study Al Zuras's writings more thoroughly so as to help Ben and the rest avoid the Death Date. I'm curious to know how this will affect his callings because he's been rather instrumental, as of late, in helping Ben figure out and fulfil the callings. Consider that, in this episode alone, without TJ there, Zeke would have never had the chance to reconcile with his father.
It was TJ who got the vision of the phoenix on the subway station wall, while Ben only got the vision of the subway train bearing down on him. They wouldn't have found the right subway terminal without TJ's part of the vision. It was TJ, not Ben, who picked up that matchbox of Zeke's dad and gave it to him, essentially making that connection. Had TJ not been there, would Ben have arrived in time to save Zeke's father? So with TJ leaving, what happens to his callings? Will he still get them? If not, then it seems that all one has to do to avoid getting the callings is leave town! TJ is making the assumption that if he leaves, the Callings will leave him alone as well. Why? I don't know....it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
And finally, we get to Saanvi. I have to admit, I'm sort of intrigued and yet disappointed in Saanvi's story arc. I think because, right from the beginning, her whole purpose on the show has revolved around her research. On the one hand, that's great because she's an invaluable member of the team. But on the other hand, who is she without her research? And also, whatever happened to the consequences of her getting rid of the callings?
I like her tenacity, that even faced with the idea that her getting rid of the callings would have negative consequences didn't seem to deter her. And for a time, it seemed like her going all loopy was a spiritual consequence of her getting rid of the callings. In the end though, it wasn't spiritual but rather chemical. Which only backed up what she pointed out to Zeke, about how Al Zuras's ship didn't have modern medicine or technology, so the same fears aren't necessarily warranted in the here and now. Which kind of removes the threat of disobeying the Callings....again! This is why I can't accept Mick getting punished for disobeying the Callings because Saanvi blatantly defied the Callings and continues to defy them, and whatever consequence she endured was fixed with modern medicine. So I can't accept that anything will happen with Mick because it wouldn't be fair.
But it seems like Saanvi has another fight on her hands. And I have to say, I loved her tenacity here too. The way that she was bent on taking down The Major, how she wasn't afraid of facing her but is absolutely determined to take her on. I loved her determination though the way she went about it kind of put Vance in a bit of a precarious position. It's actually good that they're returning to this storyline because I think Saanvi and her research basically hit a dead end and she couldn't go further with that anymore. Which is yet another reason why I think Zeke will die because that life-saving research that Saanvi was doing is now, most likely, gone. And Saanvi's belief that the Major may have made a crack in her research means that she can no longer work towards finding a cure and will have to let Zeke die. Plus, with Zeke and Mick and the Stone family looking for Cal, I think everything will shift from saving Zeke to saving Cal and stopping The Major.
So next week is the season finale, and we'll see how it all connects and how it all ends. I'm really am prepared that Zeke dies and by rights, he should. They've built it all too much for him not to. However, I'd be fine with some kind of weird fluke if perhaps he somehow travels into the future or that he disappears without dying thanks to the Callings. They obviously have to do something weird with him considering he wasn't on Flight 828 and yet received the callings and got a death date and time travelled like the 828ers did. So I'm hoping they will shine some kind of light on all of that. Also, I do hope that Adrian shows up as well because that would help to close some loose ends in regards to the visions of the shadows and why they appeared to Adrian and Cal.
Can't wait!
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